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Author: KA Doore

Started writing: November 1, 2016Manuscript sent: June 27, 2017Total days: 239I.E.: 7.9 monthsPercentage of days spent writing: 94%Estimated days spent writing: 224Average hours/day: 2.4Average hours of sleep/day: hahahahaNumber of drafts: 4Word count of draft one (aka draft zero): 56,649Word count of draft two (aka draft one): 63,686Word count of draft three (aka beta draft): 84,638Word count of draft four (aka final draft aka finished MS): 95,069Number of times I knew I wouldn’t get this done on time: 220Number of times I knew I would: 4Number of times it mattered: 0Number of cupcakes eaten in celebration: 1Number of days I’m taking off between books: 0

As of Friday, Book One is done. And yet it’s not really “finished,” per se. It’s sitting quietly on my harddrive, resting and dreaming, before I slog through it for one last read-through, then it’ll be off to my editor who may (or may not) tear it apart and declare it an abomination. Either way, there will be more edits.

Which made me wonder why I felt like I could label it as it is, done. A big part of it is definitely a feeling, a big sigh of relief, a rush of pride. Yet I have been here before with books I’ve written, only to turn around and completely rewrite them 2 months or 2 years down the line.

So what does done mean?

For me, at least now, at least in this moment and for this project, it appears to mean that it’s at a point where I’m comfortable sharing without caveats. When I gave it to my betas at the end of May, I also gave them a ton of caveats. I was as far as I could get on my own at the time, but I also knew there were still problems, could feel them even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on them. So I told them that, told them to expect that it wouldn’t be perfect, and that it definitely had problems, and to please help me find what those problems were.

Now… it still has problems. It will never be perfect. But I feel like I can hand it off without caveats. That it can stand on its own. Within all those words is a complete story with a full character arc and logical consequences and big stakes, and minimal, if any, plot holes.

Again, there might still be things I’ve missed, things I’m blind to. I’m going to read through it one last time and then other, fresher eyes will have a go at it. But for now, Book One is as done as I can make it.

The best decision I’ve made so far with this round of edits – aside from, you know, doing them – was to turn on Track Changes. Now whenever I feel like I’m treading water and getting nowhere, all I have to do is flip to “show all markup” and see just how much I’ve done.

Aaah.

Of course, all that red doesn’t say anything about the quality of the edits, but it sure is pretty to look at.

T minus 10 days and counting and I’m finally starting to feel like I’m going to make it, and not just at the last second. 60-ish pages left to edit, 2-ish scenes let to (re)write. I’m starting to get it into my head that I’ll have time for another read through. But let’s not get too cocky – something is bound to happen and eat up all my soft deadline cushioning.

But I’m already starting to plan what I’m gonna do when this is off my desk. Sleep. Read. Buy a chocolate cake. Eat it all. And then start writing the next book. Which I am SUPER excite about, FYI.

In the meantime, I’ve still got 10 days, so here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! raucous gambling, mythology tweaking, and polite civic discourse.

Betas, man. What would we do without them? They’re magical creatures, willing to take the time out of their days, weeks, (months?), to glance over an unpolished manuscript and not only give feedback, but give supporting details and thoughts and comments and maybe – hopefully – a few ideas on what they think might help.

When we’ve been elbows-deep in the entrails of our book for months (years) on end, a beta helps us step back and see the body instead of the gore. Or, perhaps, a better metaphor: when we’ve been behind the scenes, constructing the scenery for our play, all we can see is the bare wood, the struts, the bad paint jobs. Our betas help us see the scenery from the audience side, where it’s clearly a quiet night scene in Paris or a warm rooftop in Peru.

Thing is, we writers spend a long time trying to capture what’s in our heads in words that will somehow, perfectly and exquisitely, recreate those same scenes and moments in the reader’s head. This is, of course, impossible. Until we become telepaths or create the technology for brain-to-brain transfers, that translation will be imperfect. Some things will always be lost. And we, the writers, will always be acutely aware of those gaps and errors.

Our betas, however, cannot see into our heads. They can only see what every reader will see in the end: what’s on the page. So – thank you, betas. Thank you on behalf of all writers, but also thank you on behalf of just me. At a time when I was 100% frustrated and done with my WIP not lining up with what was in my head, you helped me to see what was actually on the page. And also fix what was there. Without betas, I’d be running endless editing loops for the next 5, 10, 15 months. Instead, now I have a plan and a way forward, an end in sight.

That said, where have I been the last few weeks? I usually update on Tuesday because that’s when I have the most time, but these past Tuesdays I’ve been feeling the crunch. First I was finishing up one last round of edits so that I could get Book One out to betas, then I was beginning the next round of edits courtesy of those amazing betas. Now I’m 100 pages into the last heavy edit / mad attempts at polishing with my deadline fast approaching. Today I added 2600 new words and an entire new chapter that will need to be polished once they’ve had some time to sit and ferment. I have 160(ish) pages left to go, two more new scenes to write, and seventeen days. I got this.

…right?

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! tense talks over tea, avuncular uncles, and exciting! research! scenes!

Chapters: 14 chapters out of 33 edited

Current word count:

Fun Google searches this week: What the parts of a screwdriver are called

I’ve hit the final stretch which means I just want to be done already. If there were writing goblins, I would leave out whatever fruit or knick-knacks they desired to finish this for me.

I can see the end in sight, but I still have to get there. In the meantime, I’ve reached the previous Rocks Fall Everyone Dies point I’d left myself at before, so it’s a bit slower going. These are all new words, so I’ll have to go back and polish them. Just have to remind myself that I will polish them and that it’s okay for the first round to be crap.

Now more than ever I’ve got to keep my head down and focus on the words.

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! violent storms, knife fights, and angst. So much angst.

The way I’ve held myself accountable over the years has shifted a bit. In the very beginning, there was NaNoWriMo and its daily word count goals coupled with an awesome little graph that rose slowly, encouragingly, over the course of a month. Outside of November, I tried to replicate that beautiful graph by plunking my words into a spreadsheet and that worked for a while.

And then, almost overnight, it stopped working. I couldn’t keep up with the minimal effort it took to use the spreadsheet. And when days (or weeks) of not writing struck, it became too easy to just… not. I tried starting a new spreadsheet, but inevitably I started too many new spreadsheets and progress stalled and I stopped completely.

After that I floundered a bit. Wrote a little here, a little there. But without accountability, it was difficult to hit my self-imposed deadlines.

Then I discovered calendars. They were perfect – something I could mark at the end of the day if I’d met my goal, and each month was a built-in fresh start. Plus, they served the purpose of, well, telling you what day it was, so I always had one around anyway.

I started by just crossing off days that I’d met my goal. Then I tried writing word count goals on the days and crossing them off as I hit them. This was great for days I inevitably fell behind and also days that I got ahead. And no matter how far behind or ahead I got, I’d recalculate my goals at the start of the next month and better manage my expectations.

Of course, with editing, word count isn’t always a reliable indicator of progress. Sometimes you rewrite an entire chapter, sometimes you add in a few paragraphs, and sometimes you just edit heavily. New words written doesn’t tell you much, but chapters edited does.

So for this round of editing, I decided to mark off whenever I finished a chapter. And I decided to celebrate that with a gold star sticker. Because of course I have gold stars. Doesn’t everyone?

I also tried to project out my goals, but even adjusting for May I’m still wildly off. But that’s okay because lookit all those stars! (The other colors are for exercise-related endeavors. Those are a little… less exciting.)

And here’s the complete month of April, for comparison:

Note that I started editing this draft on April 1st, so this shows my whole editing process so far. And no, I honestly don’t remember what happened on the 8th, but it must have been pretty exciting for all those stars.

Not every writer needs daily accountability, but as someone in the slow-but-steady camp of writing, it really has helped me keep up momentum and avoid some panicking. Note – “some,” not all, panicking.

As far as the actual editing goes, I have reached that point where I kind of want my betas to read it, instead of simply dreading them reading it. I’m still in the Not Sure If This Is One Hot Mess Or Not stage (which includes such great hits as My Editor Will Regret Me and Oh God Everyone’s Made a Big Mistake and How Did I Con Anyone Into Thinking I Could Write??) and likely will stay there until I can finally take a step back and look at the proverbial forest.

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! thunderbolts and lightning (very very frightening [me]), family feuds, and questionable intents.

The baby is sleeping better and the days are gradually lengthening. I can see an end in sight. The threads of this story are coming together, tight and snug, while at the same time the notepad I have open on my desktop continues to accumulate little changes – tone shift here, reordering a scene there, small continuity notes for the next run through – the last one before this goes to betas.

This is my favorite part. I love the nitty gritties: attending to details, tracking whose hand is where and what phase the moon is in and just when to drop that teeny tiny tidbit of important information so it’ll seem organic. I love chopping out words and smoothing sentences and fixing a character’s voice.

This WIP no longer feels like I went out to the backyard and dug up a pile of dirt and just left it there, an untidy mess, but it doesn’t feel quite right yet, either. I’m too close to it right now and don’t know what to think. Part of me is confident that this is the worst thing I have ever written. But part of me recognizes that every WIP at this point is the worst thing I have ever written. So: I don’t know. And I can’t know.

And that’s okay. Worrying about how awful this really is can come later. Right now, I need to keep my head down and write.

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! ominous weather, grievous wounds, and rooftops on fire.

Chapters: 23 chapters out of 32(?) edited

Current word count:

Coffee?: Coffee.

Number of times I’ve listened to that one song while writing this book, according to just the iTunes on my netbook: 128

Random fact of the week: Undyed baby camel yarn is a smooth cream in color. Also, baby camel yarn is a thing that exists.

Another week, another 10,000 words closer to my goal, another seven days closer to my deadline, another notch up on the panic scale. I think we’re around abouts purple, going on plaid. Thankfully, I do my best work while panicking. It’s also good for the skin! (No, no it’s not.)

Despite a week of horrendous sleep on mine and the baby’s part, I’ve managed to continue making progress. Sometimes, it feels like, through sheer force of will alone. Well, what else is will for but to meet deadlines?

Alas, alas I feel like I’m finally in my element. Am I alone in loving the editing process? It’s so satisfying, like filling a hundred tiny holes so that you finally have a uniform, cohesive surface. If you do it right, it’s as clean and smooth as glass. Nobody can see – or even find – all the cracks you’ve filled in, all the holes repaired. It’s a process of bringing order to chaos and finally, finally seeing a real story with real characters.

Of course, this feeling will only last for another day or two, then we’ll be right back in the depths of despair, but at least the process is predictable, eh?

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! self-inflicted angst, broken promises, and more (always more) corpses.

Ever since that snowfall two weeks ago, Michigan has been all sunshine and flowers. Within the space of a weekend, every tree here has burst forth with leaves or blossoms. Spring is quite literally in the air. And by spring I mean pollen.

Here’s to you, allergy-sufferers. May your antihistamines not make you drowsy.

Instead of enjoying the everything’s-not-covered-in-ice weather, I’ve been holed up working on this (semi-)final draft. But I can see the neighbor mowing his lawn from my window so it’s just like being outside. Right?

But the end is in sight and soon – so soon, but not that soon, maybe another month, honest – I will be handing this not-so-shabby draft (can we just start calling all final drafts the not-so-shabby draft from now on?) over to my handful of delightful and I-swear-I’ll-pay-you-in-wine-and-chocolate betas and then picking up a glass of lemonade while sitting and relaxing on the front porch with all the windows open and nothing to do but watch the cars go by and the fireflies wake up and –

Aah, who am I kidding. I’ll be busy working on the next book while my betas read. Who needs rest and relaxation when you can have caffeine and anxiety, amiright??¹

Without further ado, here’s current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! desiccated corpses, moonlit vistas, and awkward flirtations.

Chapters: 12 chapters out of 35(?) edited

Current word count:

Desiccated corpses in novel: 2

Desiccated corpses in real life: 0

¹No really I’m fine mom, I’m just exaggerating and not drinking 10 cups of coffee a day that would be entirely too unhealthy of course

I’ve been down on myself a lot during this particular writing process. I feel like my first draft was wildly different from my draft zero, which of course was the most awful awful that ever awfuled. And my first draft still has a lot of problems. How could I have been so far off? How could I need so much rewriting, and now, so much editing? I thought I’d come so far as a writer, and yet –

Despondent, I picked through the old drafts folder for the Impossible Contract. I rediscovered its draft zero and idly skimmed through it – and was quickly surprised by what I found. My fond memories of the process, where everything went smoothly from the very beginning, complete with candy and unicorns, were 100% incorrect. No, it hadn’t gone smoothly. No, I hadn’t known what I was doing from page one. No, it hadn’t been a neater process than the one I’m going through now. I’d still needed to rewrite and rethink my draft zero going into my first draft and my first draft going into my final draft.

If anything, that draft zero was more of a mess than this one. For instance, Amastan, a side character in TIC who is the main character in Book One originally didn’t even exist. And yet, that draft zero still became a book that I’m proud of.

And I’ve been bemoaning the fact that I’m struggling a bit with this ending, but how did the draft zero of TIC end? “Rocks fall, everybody dies.” Not even kidding.

So okay. I’m willing to admit that the despondency is just a part of the process. That my draft zeros are always a mess – and that’s okay. It’s to be expected, even.

Just remind me of this when I’m neck-deep in Book Three, mmkay?

And now we have the current progress on Book One, working title Redacted, the story of a historian turned assassin turned detective who’s more than just a little tired of this shit. Now with more! angry spirits, angry drum chiefs, and angry cups of tea. J/k on the cups of tea. Of course tea can’t feel anger. Everybody knows tea only feels contempt.